Putting forward one’s human face on television can be an awkward business. Of course, it helps if you have a mesmerising story to tell, and I doubt if even Heather Mills’s many enemies could claim this isn’t the case.

On Shrink Rap (Wednesday, More4), Mills talked about her life and ‘challenges’ to Dr Pamela Connolly, who listened in a sage, Buddha-ish sort of way, occasionally interjecting little insights, or warm blasts of encouragement – often to do with the dreadful burden imposed by her subject’s compulsive generosity. Given what she was hearing, the wonder is that her eyebrows didn’t fly right off her head.

Over the years, I have followed Heather Mills’s story with something worryingly close to monomania, but even I had no idea that her father believed he was the reincarnation of Wagner. A troubling revelation in any household – and it can’t have been much fun for the Wagners either. Elsewhere, her biography sounds like a savagely lurid Victorian melodrama with characters to match. There was ‘The Young Italian Gentleman’ who she was stepping out with when she suffered her near-fatal accident; ‘The Theatre Actor’ who ran off with her mother; ‘The Swimming Pool Instructor’ who abused her best friend in front of eight-year-old Heather, and so on.

Then there were the dark portents: her mother, Mills claimed, also lost a leg, albeit under tantalisingly mysterious circumstances – ‘It just came right off,’ said Mills. All this, not surprisingly, left her a bruised woman – one who, according to Connolly, became a ‘compulsive care-taker’, determined to fix everyone else’s problems while her own bubbled ominously away.

Slowly, and with all empathetic guns blazing, we moved towards her marriage to Paul McCartney. ‘He spoke to you in a very deep place,’ ventured Connolly. He did indeed, Mills agreed. But where might that deep place be? His wallet perhaps? Absolutely not. According to Connolly, McCartney was in fact one of a long line of powerful, unpredictable father-figures. A more hummable version of Richard Wagner.

Then there was all the press coverage to contend with. ‘You saw the press as another controlling father,’ insisted Connolly. At this point, the viewer might have been wondering just how many controlling father-figures one can reasonably claim to have been swayed by.

However, it was not until near the end that Connolly threw her curve ball. ‘You inspire envy in people,’ she declared. Even Mills looked a bit stunned by this – or perhaps she was just reeling from Connolly’s earlier verdict: ‘You are so programmed to please.’ Well, possibly, although it’s a program that would seem to have enjoyed somewhat limited success.